you see the what, but not the when
by SerenLyall
Summary: The nights when he dreams of New Earth are always hard.


**disclaimer:** not mine. unfortunately. trust me, if Voyager was mine, I wouldn't be dinking around on fanfiction dot net.

 **rating/warnings:** teen/some implied sex, nothing explicit

 **notes:** This summer I wrote a fic called "turn and turn and turn again" that was about Kathryn post-Resolutions. A couple of people asked to see Chakotay's side. I figured I'd oblige - and today, while driving home from Wyoming, suffering from writer's block, seemed to be as good a time as any.

Let me know how it turned out!

p.s. major kudos to anyone who knows where the fic titles come from.

* * *

 **you see the what, but not the when**

He still dreams of New Earth.

They are cruel, those nights when he dreams of her, and of them, and of that paradise that held them close in its gentle embrace. He wakes with tears on his cheeks, and blood in his mouth, and pain lodged deep within his chest. Sometimes it hurts so much that he finds he cannot breathe—not without the hitching jerk of a sob threatening to choke him.

He had been happy there, amid those jeweled tones of paradise. He remembers the richness of the earth, remembers the smell of wood and blossom and water, remembers the soft caress of the wind upon his face. He remembers the thrill of the ax in his hands as he laid low that first tree—the one which he had made into a bathtub. He remembers the fulness of his contentment when he looked upon the things his hands had made, the pride he had harbored at hearing her words of delight.

But mostly he remembers her—remembers sitting at the table across from her as he told her the story of the angry warrior. Remembers the taste of her lips, of her skin, of her pleasure. Remembers the softness of her skin, the gentleness of her voice, the warmth of her body curled close to his.

He had told her he loved her, and she had not believed him. He knew she did not—knows, even now, that she does not. He had seen it in her eyes and felt it in the tautness of her skin, the iron of her muscles, the slate of her bones. She had not believed him, and she had not said it back to him.

But all the same, as their days together had lengthened into weeks, and those weeks into months, Chakotay had sworn that he felt in her a slowly blossoming peace. Peace with their lot, drawn and determined by forces too small and mighty for her science or his religion. Peace with her choice to let him into her bed and, eventually, into her heart. Peace with him, kind and gentle, who had said "I love you" the first night she lay with him.

That peace had been crushed by duty, and by love—a love Chakotay loves in turn, even as he resents it. For the love of the crew had been what brought her back from the brink of peace, and her love of duty what brought her away from him. It defines her, and succors her, and he knows that without her crew and without her duty she is nothing—but still Chakotay resents it, and resents the wounds both have dealt her.

He sees them in her—sees them from where he sits, stands, follows by her side. He sees the darkness that is fashioned in her soul, sees the pain and damage dealt by those things she loves, and the things that love her. It is a curse, Chakotay thinks. For surely only a curse could explain the cruelty of her lot in life: constant bereavement of hope and joy and light.

It is cruel, those days after which Chakotay dreams of New Earth. It is like he can see anew the pain in her body, her mind, her soul. He sees again the woman who had shrunk away from his declaration of love, who had only begun to blossom beneath the kind and gentle sun of paradise once all ties from crew and duty were severed. He sees again the woman who gave and will give her entire being for the sake of that which loves her as cruelly as she loves it.

He wonders if she can see it—if she can feel it, this cruel agony wrought upon her by that which she loves. He wonders if she is blind to it—as blind to it as she was to their peace on New Earth. He wonders if she cares—if she seeks this pain, this agony, as penance or proof of her love.

He wonders if she knows he can see it.

In the evenings after those cruel days, Chakotay goes to the gym and beats the memory of her smile and her voice and her skin out of his fingers and thoughts and bones. His knuckles bruise, his nails tear, and Chakotay revels in the savage mockery of the pain that beats like a thousand feathers in his chest. He revels, and pretends to summon the darkness that plagues her, challenges it with his bruised knuckles and torn nails.

He wonders if she will ever let him bear the burden of her pain.

He wonders if she has yet to acknowledge it herself.

When he returns to his room, he runs a regenerator over his mottled skin, and then showers in heat and silent agony. The air steams, and the mirror fogs over, and as the water sluices from his skin, Chakotay can almost imagine that she is there with him, just as she was those final few perfect days.

Whether or not he cries then, Chakotay never knows.

It is the nights, though, that are the worst.

He wakes from the memory of her lying in his arms to nothing but a cold and empty bed beside him. He wakes from the memory of her lips against his to the taste of cool, recycled air. He wakes from the memory of her skin against his to only aching nothing.

He sits up, throws his legs over the edge of his bed, and after dressing in tank and sweat pants, goes for a run through the empty night's halls. He drums the memory of her out of his body with feet against floor, with breath in his lungs, with the ache in his muscles from too hard, too far, too fast.

When he returns to his quarters, to shower and dress for the day—because he can never sleep again, not after the memories of paradise denied—he hesitates outside of her door. He hesitates, and there is no small part of him that yearns to ring her door chime, yearns to gather her into his arms when she appears, yearns to kiss her and promise that nothing will stand between them again—not even her.

But, inevitably, he turns away. He turns away, and returns to his own rooms, to shower and dress and pretend that all is well, that he has not dreamed for the dozenth time, the fiftieth time, the hundredth time of her and him still together on perfect New Earth.

He turns away, and wonders if Kathryn still dreams of New Earth—if she misses it as much as he does. He wonders if she knows what it is she lost—if she had seen in herself the peace that Chakotay had seen begin to bloom. He wonders if she mourns as much as he does the loss of their future.

He wonders—and then he doubts, and turns away to his own rooms, to drown his thoughts in hot water and the red and black comfort of his uniform.

He doubts. And beneath that doubt—beneath the blood of his knuckles against a punching bag, beneath the fluttering feathers of agony in his breast, beneath the cruelty of sitting beside her day in and day out and watching her tear herself apart—beneath everything, he mourns.


End file.
